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Dessert

Baked Apple Dumplings

A baked dessert of apples wrapped in dough, filled with sugar, cinnamon, and butter, served with molasses sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Baked Apple Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt.

  3. Cut in the butter until crumbly, then stir in the milk to form a dough.

  4. Roll out the dough and cut it into squares.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill each apple's center with sugar, cinnamon, and a small piece of butter.

  2. Wrap each apple in a square of dough, sealing the edges with a little milk.

  3. Place the dumplings on a baking sheet and bake for 25 minutes, or until the apples are tender.

  4. Serve with molasses sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the dough's structure once mixed with liquid and fat.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the dough rises and turns light.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the dough tender and flaky as it is cut in.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form the dough and adds moisture for browning.
Sour apples
Provide the fruit filling that softens and turns tender as the dumplings bake.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the apples caramelise slightly as they bake.

The step that matters

Sealing the dough around each apple. Gaps in the seal let the sugary juices leak out during baking, so the dough can burst or cook unevenly. Sealing firmly with milk, which acts as a glue, keeps the filling inside while it steams.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, milk, sugar, cinnamon, molasses, sauce):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk, sugar, cinnamon, molasses, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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